There needs to be a point to data integration. Simply bringing in data and displaying it is not enough. Your business needs to have a plan for how that data will be used after it is integrated. Often I get the feeling that organizations treat Salesforce.com like some sort of data warehouse and then complain afterwards that producers aren't adopting the system. The majority of producers are not secretly hiding aspirations of being data scientists. The majority just want to service their existing book and make more money. Integrating back-end or third party data into Salesforce.com and hoping that suddenly it is going to inspire your producers to adopt Salesforce and put your agency on a pathway to success, is fools gold. So what's the answer? In a nutshell, you need to develop a plan for how the data is intended to be used. If you don't have a plan or a use, then don't integrate it. Success comes from making Salesforce.com part of a successful process and integrated data needs to have a clear role in that process.

About the authorAndrew Bartels has been recognized by Salesforce.com as one of the leading innovators with regard to implementing Salesforce.com in the insurance vertical. As a CTO for a Top 100 Independent Insurance Agency, he oversaw the deployment of a Salesforce.com system in 2010. Over the next three years, he focused on customizing the system and implementing best practices for the insurance industry, ultimately generating a significant ROI for the firm. Andrew brings years of hard fought experience to our clients so that they can accelerate their ROI in implementing Salesforce.com.

I often read blogs and articles about about how best to use leads or accounts in Salesforce.com. Sometimes they are about how to qualify leads or accounts. Sometimes they contain guidance related to when to add a new opportunity. Don't get me wrong, all of this is critically important. However, when driving adoption of a new system, it is important to use the language of the new user.

What do I mean by this? What is this language of the new user? Well, what do leads, accounts and/or opportunities all have in common? Fundamentally they are all lists. Lists are something any user, new or experienced, can relate to. We make lists everyday whether it be in our personal lives to remember to buy milk or in our professional lives to plan a meeting or prioritize a set of tasks.

We make lists to remember because in our personal lives, forgetting has a down side such as no milk for breakfast. Lists keep us organized and the more organized we are, the more effective we tend to be. So ultimately if we approach leads, accounts and/or opportunities as lists and present them to producers as such then it can be shown that most producers, especially those new to Salesforce.com, will get it. They will better understand because what many producers seek is better organization. They want to be more efficient and get more done in the hours they have available. This is a great start to showing them how Salesforce.com can transform leads, accounts and opportunities into lists, which they can use to manage their day to day professional lives.

So, how can we present leads, accounts and opportunities as lists? SalesForce.com has a great and I feel under utilized feature, named 'views'. 'Views' are by all intents and purposes lists with all sorts of great features that you might find in a tool like MS Excel. For example, you can sort columns in ascending or descending order. Users have the ability to create their own custom views containing only the columns they deem important and to add simple or complex filters to focus on just the records the user deems important. Additionally using the inline editing feature you can edit list information without ever leaving the page much as you would do in MS Excel.

Ultimately, lists are about organization. Organization is about structure. Structure comes from systems. Successful sales persons are by definition not lucky rather they are disciplined and organized. Explore the methods of every successful sales person or producer and you will find a system. Whether it be an intricate system of paper files or a mastery of ACT, Goldmine or Excel. The stories of producers, who into their 70's still bring in a million dollars of new revenue, religiously have their assistant bring them their 'prospecting' files on a Tuesday morning abound in different forms through out the annals of successful brokerages. Ultimately these individuals are disciplined and organized. What differentiates lists in Salesforce.com from lists created in other forms are the tools and functionality that Salesforce.com wraps around lists. Not only are your lists instantly searchable but a list created in Salesforce.com has depth. Information entered as lists in Salesforce is instantly reportable and dashboard-able. So instead of being visible only to the creator, lists created in Salesforce can be shared or made visible to team members. As we all know that the fundamentals of building a 'book of business' are prospecting, up-selling and cross selling. In most cases collaboration and visibility is required to achieve success in these endeavors. Developing lists is the first step in putting in place the foundations of a successful prospecting, up- sell/cross sell strategy. So when one analyzes the objectives of both sales leadership and producers, you will quickly see from the above, that lists are a way to begin to achieve both sets of objectives. Producers for the most part want to sell more and increasing organization and structure are the beginnings of meeting that goal. Leadership wants visibility so that they can ensure that producers are focused on the agreed goals and objectives, while enabling them to coach and facilitate when needed. All in all when you connect Salesforce.com with the concept of lists you provide a win win environment that is easy to understand and get started with while allowing scalability and flexibility in the future.

So when introducing Salesforce.com to producers make sure you use the language of the new user.

About the authorAndrew Bartels has been recognized by Salesforce.com as one of the leading innovators with regard to implementing Salesforce.com in the insurance vertical. As a CTO for a Top 100 Independent Insurance Agency, he oversaw the deployment of a Salesforce.com system in 2010. Over the next three years, he focused on customizing the system and implementing best practices for the insurance industry, ultimately generating a significant ROI for the firm. Andrew brings years of hard fought experience to our clients so that they can accelerate their ROI in implementing Salesforce.com.

Recently I was reading an article discussing why Smart Televisions had not taken off with consumers.

One of the reasons identified, was the poor design of the remote control. Does anyone remember the Logitech remote with a full keyboard more suited for an office than your living room? Or the remote for the Google TV that had no less than 80 buttons? No wonder adoption was poor.

What's even more shocking, is that this new generation of devices was competing to try and replace the remote and user interface associated with the cable set top box, which is surely one of the worst user interface experiences ever.

The reality was, that even though learning how to use these new devices would provide consumers with access to a wealth of information and even though the TV engineers were competing to replace a much maligned incumbent, users still voted with their wallets. This demonstrated very clearly that they would not replace one poor experience with another.

This is a very similar scenerio to the outcome many agencies experience when they try to implement Salesforce.com. From the agency management perspective, they see the newly deployed Salesforce.com implementation, with its wealth of information and features, in a similar way to how the Google design team viewed 'Google TV' for consumers. And like Google, many agency management teams find themselves battling low adoption rates. Yes, they are replacing a system that in many agencies is nothing more than MS Outlook and Excel, but too often producers would much rather stay with what they know than change. Just like how over the years, consumers have learned how to find the shows they need to watch, despite the poor experience.

Change is hard and for any system to be adopted the user experience needs to be intuitive, easy to use and help deliver success for the producer from a 'Whats in it for me?' perspective. If you fail to deliver on any of these, your implementation faces a high probability of delivering low adoption and ultimately failing.

So what is the fix?

Whenever you look at Salesforce.com there are two different perspectives. The producer perspective and the management perspective. The root cause of many adoption issues originate with the decision to implement Salesforce.com from a management perspective. Huge amounts of effort are put into deciding what information needs to be collected and how that information will be displayed. This is exactly what happened with Google TV. As one reviewer put it, Google TV was designed by engineers for engineers. Google solved an engineering problem and at the same time forgot that in order to be deemed successful, the product needed to solve a consumers problem. Simply replace the word "engineer" with "management" and "consumer" with "producer" and there you have it.

In my experience, the majority of producers, especially in Independent agencies, are quite happy with the status quo. So when the implementation team focuses on delivering what management needs without giving enough thought to how the producers will actually use the system on a daily basis, they are setting themselves up for failure. Going from a program like MS Outlook and/or Excel to an overly complex Salesforce.com implementation can be like going from your poorly designed cable remote to the 80 key Google TV remote. The intention might be good but if the change is just too overwhelming or the producer is left asking 'What's in this for me?' then as a result, adoption will be poor.

If an agency is focused on driving adoption then they need to focus on understanding how their producers currently work and what their needs are. They need to customize Salesforce.com in such a way that it acts as an extension of a producer's day. The system needs to shout out, "how can I help you Mr. Producer?" or stated more simplistically, "How can I put more money in your pocket?"

Approaching an implementation in this way, might actually mean that management might have to sacrifice some of what they want in Phase 1 in order to keep the interface simple. Shocking I know, but if you over-complicate producers' lives in Phase 1, you might never get to Phase 2. The beauty of implementing a platform like Salesforce.com as opposed to a traditional application is that it does not preclude you from adding additional complexity later.

The moral of the story is that you can create a technically complex product with loads of "wiz bang" features and tons of super clever integration but still fail in your objective, which should be to create a tool that your producers will actually use. So, if you are thinking of implementing Salesforce.com in your agency, think like a consumer and not like a Google engineer. Make sure you focus on the needs of the producer first.

At PSAdvisory we believe that we understand how Insurance Producers think and work. When we combine our understanding of Salesforce.com with our implementation framework which we call 'The 4 Quadrant Method' we believe that we provide your agency with the best possibility of success.

If you are thinking of implementing Salesforce.com in your agency contact us and lets have a discussion.

About the authorAndrew Bartels has been recognized by Salesforce.com as one of the leading innovators with regard to implementing Salesforce.com in the insurance vertical. As a CTO for a Top 100 Independent Insurance Agency, he oversaw the deployment of a Salesforce.com system in 2010. Over the next three years, he focused on customizing the system and implementing best practices for the insurance industry, ultimately generating a significant ROI for the firm. Andrew brings years of hard fought experience to our clients so that they can accelerate their ROI in implementing Salesforce.com.

One of the misconceptions I often hear when I speak with Independent Agency decision makers is that Salesforce.com will or should replace their Agency Management System. That said I am not saying it is not possible. I am sure that at some stage in the future, some entrepreneur will band together with a sharp developer and present to the world a solution built on top of the Force.com platform and all the world's problems will be solved. However, at this moment in time no complete solution exists.

So if Salesforce.com is not going to replace your Agency Management System, what is its role in the Agency? After all Agency Management Software is not cheap. Why spend more hard earned dollars on Salesforce.com?

There is no doubt that the role of the Agency Management System in the agency is to manage the process of policy renewal. The problem is that your clients are not policies. They are people. Your agency and your producers have relationships with people. Salesforce.com is built around the whole concept of managing customer relationships. As Salesforce.com's CEO likes to say, they have built their organization around a concept which they call 'a customer company'. The customer is and should be at the center of your systems. Agency Management systems are designed to ensure that your clients' policies are easily accessible in the appropriate format and that your team has a clear understanding of the premiums, coverages and expiration dates. Agency Management Systems do not manage your client relationships in any way shape or form. Yes, most do an okay job of ensuring that staff or producers have an opportunity to record activity, but to be honest, the purpose of this functionality is to protect the agency against E&O claims in a 'he said/she said' situation. Salesforce.com is there to help your producers and staff manage the relationship with the client or prospect. After all, it is not a policy that renews, it is a human being.

Reason 2 - Agency Management Systems manage revenue not opportunity

Agency Management Systems track recognized revenue very well. In fact most Agency Management Systems include a General Ledger package which is the de-facto accounting platform for the firm. What Agency Management Systems don't do very well is track future opportunities. In other words, they were not designed to help producers manage the new business process. Yes, various attempts have been made to bolt on this functionality but when one really gets down to the nitty gritty, these solutions just don't meet muster. As a result, producers resort to leveraging tools like Outlook and MS Excel. The result is disorganization and dis-function at a point in the process where organization and collaboration are most needed. Salesforce.com is designed to address all of these challenges. Whether it be providing the structure required to turn a prospect into a client or the tools to track information that is critical to qualifying a prospect. Salesforce.com augments the daily function of your producers by providing them with easy to use functionality with which to fill the void left by the Agency Management System or what I like to the call the "Policy Management System."

When I talk to agency managers, the number one challenge they face is lack of visibility. As I have learned, producers are not traditional sales reps. You do not manage successful producers using a traditional carrot and stick approach. Good leaders or managers at independent agencies should coach and assist their producers in the same way as a football coach advises his quarterback. The challenge is that in order to do this effectively, the manager or coach needs visibility. A coach on the football field has the luxury of watching the plays unfold in front of him. Traditional Agency Management systems are transactional by design and transactional systems don't do a great job on the visibility front. This is where Salesforce.com comes into its own. Using the standard functionality brought to the table by Salesforce.com along with the customizable nature of the product, one can easily design fields, workflows, reports and dashboards that inform and guide both managers and producers. The result is that instead of spending the first 20 minutes of every meeting with producers getting an update, managers can inject themselves into the process when it matters most to help better coach and be a more productive use of both the producer and the manager's time.

Conclusion

Deciding to implement a solution like Salesforce.com is not about replacing the functionality of your Agency Management System, but rather it is about completing the process. Anyone that has studied successful independent insurance agencies knows that there are certain things they do that make them successful. Traditional Agency Management Systems are important but they don't do it all with the result being that producers and managers are left to fill in the gaps using Outlook and Excel. Salesforce.com is one solution that when implemented correctly can address many of these deficiencies and help make both producers and agencies more successful.

For a great example of how we believe Salesforce.com should be configured, check out this webinar I did in conjunction with Salesforce.com a few weeks ago.

I often hear businesses or agencies discuss volume of 'visits' or if you prefer 'appointments' as a success determinant in the sales or cross sell process. Many of us know there is nothing like a face-to-face meeting with a decision maker to drive a deal forward. It is that magic period of time where you have the full and undivided attention of the person whom controls the fate of the opportunity.

For so many organizations with outside representatives or producers this is one of the tangibles. Something you can measure. When I talk to sales managers this is always something that comes up as a factor in the success matrix because as the old adage goes, "with activity comes success." Correct?

Well I would say maybe. You would assume that if there is lots of activity, lots of face time then success should follow; but, so often there is not a clear relationship between activity, face time and success.

So I bet you're asking why?

I would argue that there is a misunderstanding of the definition of a visit. Too often a visit is misidentified as a calendar event. That magical entry in the Calendar that denotes when you will physically arrive and meet a prospect.

So what is the correct definition of a visit?

By my definition a visit is a process. It is the process of planning what goes on prior to the actual calendar visit. It is what happens during the event itself and it is the actions that are executed following departure. The actual calendar event is only one part of a multi part process. Success is ultimately determined by the sum of those parts.

So if you agree that the planning and execution of a process is a key factor in a successful visit then the next question becomes how do you identify best practices and ensure that these best practices are replicated throughout your organization.

This is where Salesforce.com can help. Yes, Salesforce can sync with Outlook, Google Mail or Lotus Notes but these are only events. What you really need is a business process that helps your representatives or producers plan, execute and follow up on prospect interactions. All of this can be done using the incredible set of tools that is the Salesforce.com platform.